The dreadful long winters here may almost be com pared to the polar parts, where the absence of the sun continues for six months ; the air being perpetually chill ed and frozen by the northerly winds in winter, and the cold fogs and mists obstructing the sun's beams in the short summer we have here; for notwithstanding the snow and ice is then dissolved in the lowlands and plains, yet the mountains are perpetually covered with snow, and incredible large bodies of ice continue is the adja rent seas.
If the air blows from the southern parts, the air is tolerably warm, but very cold when it comes from the northward; and it seldom blows otherwise than between the north-east and north-west, except in the two summer months, when we have, for the major part, light gales between the cast and the north, and calms.
The northerly winds being so extremely cold, is owing in the neighbourhood of high mountains, whose tops arc covered with snow, which exceedingly chills the air passing over them. The fogs and mists that are brought here from the polar parts in winter, appear to the naked eye in icicles innumerable, as small as line hairs or thread•.. and pointed as sharp as needles. These ici cles lodgt in our clothes; and, if our faces or hancls be oncovcred, they presently raise blisters as white as a li nen cloth, and as hard as horn. Vet if we immediately turn our backs to the weather, and can bear our hand out of our mitten, and with it rub the blistered part fur a small time, we sconctitnes bring the skin to its former state : if not, we 1114i:C our way to a fire, and get warm water, wherewith we bathe it, and thereby dissipate the humours raised by the frozen air; otherwise the skin would be off in a short time, with much hot, serous, wa tery matter coining from under along with the skin; and this happens to sonic almo-t every time they go abroad for five or six months in the winter, so extremely cold is the air when the wind blows any thing strong.
It is not a little surprising to many, that such extreme cold should be felt in these parts of America, more than places of the same latitude on the coast of Norway; but the difference I take to be occasioned by wind blowing constantly here, for 7 months in the 12, between the and N. W. and passing over a large tract of land, and exceeding high mountains, &c. as before-mentioned. Whereas or Drontheirn in Norway, as I observed some years ago in there, the wind all the winter comes from the N. and It N. \V. and crosses a great part of the ocean clear of these large bodies of ice we find here perpetually. At this place we have constantly
every year 9 months frost and ‘now, and insufferable cold from October till the beginning of' The vast bodies of ice we meet with in passage from England to Hudson's Bay, are very not only as to quantity, but magnitude, and as unaccountanh: how they are formed of so great a bulk, some of them being immersed 100 fathoms or more under the surface of the ocean, and one-fifth or one-sixth part above, and three or four miles in circumference. Some hundreds of these we sometimes see in our voyage here, all in sight at once, if the weather is clear. Some of them are frequently seen on the coasts and banks of Newfoundland and New-England, though much diminished.
When I have been becalmed in Hudson's Straits, for three or four tides together, I have taken my boat and laid close to the side of one of them, sounded and found WO fathom water all around it. The tide flowcth here above four fathom; and I have observed, by marks upon a body of ice, the tide to rise and fall that difference, which was a certainty of its being aground. Likewise, in a harbour in the island of Resolution, where I con tinued four days, three of these isles of ice (as we call them) came aground. I sounded along by the side of one of them, quite round it, and found thirty-two fathom water, and the height above the surface but ten yards ; another-was twenty-eight fathom under, and the perpen dicular height but nine yards above the water.
I can in no other manner account for the aggregation of such large bodies of ice but this ; all along the coasts of Straits Davis, both sides of Baffin's-Bay, Hudson's Straits, Anticosti, or Labradore, the land is very high and bold, and 100 fathoms, or more, close to the shore. These shores have many inlets or fuirs, the cavities of which are filled up with ice and snow, by the almost per petual winters there, and frozen to the ground, increasing four, five or seven years, till a kind of deluge or land flood, which commonly happens in that space of time throughout those parts, breaks them loose, and launches them into the straits of the ocean, where they are driven about by the variable winds and currents in June, July, and August, rather increasing than diminishing in bulk, being surrounded (except in four or five points of the compass) with smaller ice for many hundred leagues, and land cc \rem(' all the year with snow, the weather be ing cxtri.tuLly cold, for the most part, in those summer months.